Research parks in the United States and Great Britain

Currently there are three types of "research parks" in the United States and Great Britain:

• "Research parks" in the narrow sense;
• "Research parks" that are different from the first that, their innovations are developed only to stage a technical prototype;
• "Incubators" (in the U.S.) and Innovation Center (in the UK and Western Europe), in which universities "provide shelter" emerging companies, giving them a relatively reasonable rent land, facilities, access to laboratory equipment and services.

"Ideal" type of research park is the oldest "science park" in Scotland - Heriot-Watt: this is the only "science park" in Europe, which allowed only conduct research and not allowed the mass production.

Since early 80-s in Western countries has spread to these countries a new form of technology parks, oriented to the needs of small "high tech" companies - innovation centers, similar to American "incubators". Their task is to combine ideas and inventions with the capital and businessmen and to attract public and private funds to provide "start-time" to innovative new companies.

Functions of innovation centers are covering different stages of the innovation process, in particular promoting the transition from production to commercialize new products. This is not always required the establishment of new companies.